Jack Burge and Daisy Streeter married on the
28th of May 1896. Soon after work began on the home that they were to spend
the rest of their lives in. Jack selected a parcel of land adjacent to
his fathers' in Hines Ln. Redbank. The house he and his brothers built
was mudbrick, partly from the hard claypan soil of the area, partly from
the excavation of a deep hole dug for a well at the rear of the house.
Jack followed in his father's footsteps fossicking for gold, and also ran
sheep, planted fruit trees and kept domestic animals.

Jack later acquired a larger, 100 acre, block
of land to the west. Four months after their marriage, the first of their
seven children, Grace Alice, was born. The charms of the very handsome
young Jack (as may be seen on the background of this page) were obviously
too great for Daisy to wait....

Jack was well known as a drinker, and would
these days no doubt be a suitable candidate for AA. He was also a gambler,
and a family scandal began when he lost the 100 acre lot mentioned above
to his brother Alfred in a game of cards. Pressure was placed on Alfred
by various family members to ignore his win and allow Jack to keep his
land, but Alfie refused. The family didn't exactly live in poverty, but
they didn't prosper either. A distinct difference in lifestyle may be seen
between Jack's circumstances and those of his brothers. They were better
off than some in the Redbank area, though, my father told of always having
shoes to wear to school, while poorer families couldn't afford them. He
also told, though, of wearing his 'nightshirt' to bed, then getting up
to tuck it into his trousers to wear through the day, changing it only
once a week on Saturday - bath night. The harsh, dry climate didn't allow
for washing, and money couldn't be wasted on extra clothes for children.

Long time next door neighbor, Charlie Egan,
tells of Jack being so befuddled one day that he walked away home with
the old horse, Dolly's, bridle over his shoulder, but Dolly had slipped
the rein to crop grass on the side of the road - and Jack didn't notice
until he was home that she was missing! Jack was a hard worker, typical
of his type of young men born to English parents in this new land, tough,
could turn his hand to anything, and make something out of nothing. He
was a strict disciplinarian to his children, and taught them strong values
of hard work and pride.

Daisy was a strong-willed woman, perhaps she
had to be! She was to become diabetic later in life, was insulin dependant,
and had gone near blind some years before her death. Family oral history
used to ascribe this to her sewing in the poor light of the kerosene lanterns
used by all at the time - but it was much more likely to have been a result
of her diabetes. Her fancy needlework was impeccable, my father used to
show it to me as a child and challenge me to tell which was the front and
which the back, so tidy was the stitching. She planted a beautiful wax-flowered
Hoya, that I still have growing some fifty years later, from a cutting
taken from the original shrub, in a tub in far-off Sydney. Other plants
in her garden were 'Naked Lady' lilies, geraniums, mint and parsley. A
line of huge pine trees grew at the side of the house along the fence,
and Pepper-corn and Boobialla trees at the side and back of the house.
The smell of fresh pepper corns always evokes 'Redbank' to me.

With the first five children born within six
years of their marriage, Jack and Daisy thought the last of their children
had been born after a seven year gap, when Amy was born. This was not to
be, however, and the couple had a 'change of life baby', my father, when
Daisy was 45 and Jack 55 - which is very fortunate for me! The upshot of
this however, was that Lindsay's parents were old, and his siblings mostly
grown and gone while he was still a young lad. It's not surprising that
birth control was difficult for the couple - their copy of Rossiter's "Practical
Guide to Health" - which I still have, told them that the least likely
time to fall pregnant was in the middle of a woman's cycle - which is actually
the very most fertile time of the month! I sincerely hope that they didn't
practice many of the other tips in this misleading text... many were equally
alarming.

Daisy opened her home to all comers, with
huge traditional English family dinners at Christmas time, all cooked on
the old wood stove in the tiny kitchen, with the many guests eating outside,
sheltering under the trees from the fierce Australian mid-summer sun. I've
received stories of young relatives coming to stay for months at a time
when they were convalescing from illness. One story is of the wicked old
talking crow that Jack kept as a pet... it made very rude comments to the
young lad who was visiting, but that was the only sign he had that he may
not have been welcome! Daisy's brother George Streeter was a frequent visitor,
and would load all his children into the back of the 1928 Chev truck and
come to Redbank on fishing trips. George's daughter also came to stay for
some time convalescing from illness when she was 20 or so. My dad's contemporary,
she met a US Marine a few years later in Melbourne, married him and moved
to the States, but still has fond memories of her visits to Auntie Daisy
and Uncle Jack.

Jack died at the age of 80 on 22 August 1945,
a week after the end of the second world war in the Pacific, and ten days
after the birth of his most recent grandchild - Lindsay's first daughter.

Daisy stayed on the farm, and Lindsay and
his wife and young family returned to care for her and work the land. She
died eight and a half years after Jack, at the age of 77, on 22 February
1953.

For me, the saddest part of dad being born
to Jack and Daisy so late in life is that I never met them - I know that
my memories would also be very fond - even if Daisy is reputed to be a
cranky old bugger by my big sister!